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Azim Khan on One Night In
Beijing
October 13, 2006
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It's a beautiful day and I decide to go out for a run.
Making my way through the neighborhood, Dr. Sherman
waves to me from his brand-new luxury SUV as he heads to
his office. I pass by little Susie, who zips down the
road on her scooter while chatting on her razor-thin
pink cellular phone. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenbloom are out on
a power-walk while landscapers do their yard work and
maids do their cleaning.
Midway through my run, I get to the poorest spot in town
– a group of economical apartments lining one of the
major roads. Not the ideal place to live… but still
tolerable. I reach the intersection, stopping to
stretch. It dawns upon me… this is the poorest part of
town. I stood pensively in front of the apartments
thinking about what "poor" really was. I thought, and I
remembered...
Running through Beijing, I stopped in front of a soaring
apartment complex, one of many lining the busy street.
From the frequency of windows and clotheslines, I
deduced the building to be very dense with small living
areas. But this wasn't exactly poor for the average
Chinese citizen. As I kept going, I gaped at numerous
high rises and skyscrapers, luxurious, flashy, modern.
In their shadows were cramped houses and apartments,
run-down, shabby, obscure. I've always seen pictures of
places like these in magazines and on TV. I'd never
given them much thought.
One night, among those houses and apartments, my friends
and I walked down the street and happened to pass by
vendors. As "wealthy" American tourists, we became the
targets of street vendors. And so began the attempts at
walking past unscathed, avoiding eye contact, hand
gestures, and anything else that would even feign our
interest in them. Except they were selling something
that I fancied: Beijing 2008 Olympic T-Shirts. I thought
they would make nice gifts for friends at home. And so
began my bargaining adventure.
We had already been in China for about two weeks, and as
well-off foreigners in a country where the exchange rate
was to our advantage, shopping and bargaining became a
hobby - an excellent opportunity to make use of my new
skills. The one vendor I encountered was a middle-aged
woman, maybe in her late forties, early fifties. She
wore an out-of-style dirty blazer, old generic suit
pants, and flimsy slip-on shoes. Her expression was
eager yet gloomy and uninteresting. I asked her how much
for one shirt. She replied 120 yuan, roughly $15 US. As
the bargainer, I told her it was way too expensive. I
gave her my absolute, unwavering price: 40 yuan (about
$5.00 US)… for 4 shirts. Desperate for business, she was
willing to negotiate. And through my stubbornness, I got
my way. When I offered her the money for the 4 shirts,
she demanded 65 yuan, not the 40 yuan on which I thought
we had agreed. And now began the real struggle. I stood
my ground, wanting to pay only 40 yuan, while she kept
complaining. In the distance, my professor, who had
tagged along, saw the argument and came over to see what
was going on. By this time, the lowest she would go was
45 yuan (about $5.63 US), but I still wanted it for 40
yuan, a difference of about 63 cents. Sixty-three cents.
I didn't care, I wanted to get the best deal possible.
Now with my professor here, the vendor began to get into
a fit, ranting in Mandarin to him. I've had vendors get
mad at me before for trying to bargain so much, but this
time the anger seemed more real, more fervent. I could
see her eyes were burning. I could only watch and wonder
what was going on. The vendor continued to go off
yelling indistinctly to me. My professor told me to just
give her the extra 5 yuan. As I walked back to the
theater with my professor, I asked him what she had been
shouting. It turns out that she was a laid-off worker
needing to support her child through college. We fixed
our gazes downwards; there were no lies among the flames
of her eyes.
And it dawned upon me: this woman wasn't selling these
shirts in her free time. She wasn't going to grab a cup
of coffee and read a magazine after work. She wouldn't
be spending an hour on the phone with girlfriends
gossiping about the latest fashion trends. She would
come back home to a room the size of my bedroom with her
entire family living in a cramped space waiting for
another day of work and, hopefully, money.
Running again, I looped around the square and headed
back in the direction of the apartments. As I ran by the
so-called poor part of town, I couldn't shake the idea
that this was what kids jokingly referred to as "the
ghetto." I remember the run-down, dense apartments, the
despairing, wretched woman. I carry these thoughts with
me on my way back home as I wipe sweat onto the sleeve
of my 2008 Beijing Olympics T-Shirt, knowing that
there's a clean change of clothes waiting in my closet.
I never forgot that one night in Beijing, among those
houses and apartments, where I saw poverty more profound
than any place here on the North Shore. |
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